


The Au Pair and the Gentleman

by Ophelia_Raine



Series: The (Mis)education of Sansa Stark [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Au Pair, Boss/Employee Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Holiday in Switzerland, I know how I like it when I like it Sansa, Intimacy, Older Man/Younger Woman, Past Relationship(s), Quite a lot of it, Romance, Sauna, Sex, Skiing, Slow Burn, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, a little flirtation with exhibitionism, governess, near sex in a Swiss sauna, or at least bloody confident Sansa, slightly Dark Sansa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-19 07:16:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14232102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ophelia_Raine/pseuds/Ophelia_Raine
Summary: A young girl in need of a mother. A man who just lost his wife. A young woman running away from her past.When recently-widowed Stannis Baratheon requested a governess for his young daughter, he never in a thousand lifetimes expected somebody like Sansa Stark to answer the call.Now they're off to Switzerland — a month in the alps with endless snowy days and long, lonely nights...What's a man like Stannis to do?





	1. Chapter 1

ONE 

 

When the agency finally calls him back, he is already in a mood. A migraine that had slowly been building since the morning now throbs behind his eyes. He loosens his tie just a fraction as he wearily picks up the phone and checks himself so that he doesn’t bark into the receiver.  

“Yes,” he clips. 

“Is this Mr Baratheon?” 

“Yes.” 

“Um… Mr _Stannis_ Baratheon?” And Stannis fights the urge to growl into the phone about being the only one left. _Of course_ he is bloody Stannis Baratheon.  

“Yes,” he says instead. 

“I’m calling about the replacement governess for Shireen, your daughter?” There is a pause and because he doesn’t speak, she continues. “Yes… uh… we’ve had some difficulty locating someone at such short notice. Especially since the… ah… successful candidate will have to be away from their own families at Christmas.” 

“Right.” His voice is tight and irritable. _Just one more thing to deal with today._

_“But_ I have two options for you to consider, ah, Mr Baratheon,” continues the voice on the phone. He flicks his wrist and glances at his watch.  

“You have three minutes before my conference call.” 

“Oooh! Okay then. Ah… better move along. The first one is actually a nun, but she’s been a governess for years. Her name is Eglantine. She is very, very good. The only… ah… _challenge_ is that she really doesn’t like the cold and has asked if she could possibly _not_ go to Switzerland with you and your daughter, but join you after.” 

“Impossible,” he finally snaps. “The point of it all is to accompany my daughter while we catch our breath in Zermatt. The house is warm, I can assure her. The Swiss know how to build a warm house, having had practice.” 

“She is insistent that she doesn’t deal with the cold. Arthritis.” 

“How old is she exactly…” He frowns. 

“Ah… seventy-two.” 

Stannis squeezes the bridge of his nose and fights for calm. It’s not the woman’s fault, he knows. But this isn’t doing his migraine any favours.  

“What is the other option you mentioned.” 

“An a _u pair,_ ” replies the voice, immediately cheered. “Yes, I know it’s not quite what you’re after… but she is taking a gap year in her studies with the option to extend it if needed. It’s not ideal, I know. It means you have to find another governess after this. And also, she is not trained to be a teacher. But she’s good with children — I’ve seen her. She came from a big family. And every test I’ve given her, she’s passed with flying colours. She is easily the most well-educated candidate in my books. And…” breathes the voice finally before delivering the _pièce de résistance_ , “…she’s young — only twenty-one — and she skis.” 

Six of one and half a dozen of the other, really. If Shireen gets attached, this could be difficult come a year. But then this Eglantine woman won’t come to Zermatt anyway. 

Stannis sighs into the phone and shakes his head even though the agency woman cannot see him. “Let’s go with the a _u pair_.” He hopes he doesn’t live to regret those words. “What’s her name again?” 

“I didn’t say it. Ah…” A shuffle of papers. “It’s… Sansa Stark, Mr Baratheon. Would you like her number?”

 

* * *

 

TWO 

 

She hadn’t banked on going to Switzerland, of all places. But just the prospect of skiing again cheers her up immeasurably. Sansa pulls out her biggest suitcase from under the bed and starts chucking in every thermal she can find. It’s one thing to have to endure the interminable dark and cold of Chicago, but the sun and blinding-white powder capping the mountains in Zermatt will at least make the cold worthwhile. Sansa has never been adverse to the cold. Just the dreariness of gray and grit. 

She knows the family, of course. It’s one of the reasons she had put herself forward in the first place. _Impetuous,_ He Who Should Not Be Named would have said.  

_He_ had said a lot of things. And done a lot of things. And _not_ done a lot of things. _And he is no longer your concern,_ reminds the voice of courage in her head and her heart.  

The Baratheons. Most of her memories are of the oldest brother. _Uncle Robert._ He had been Father’s closest friend. A huge, jolly fellow with a bawdy sense of humour. Mum had constantly closed Arya and Bran’s ears around him. Sansa had not been spared. Too many children, too few maternal hands to cup vulnerable ears. 

The only time she met Stannis was at some party at Uncle Robert’s house. And all she remembered of him then was how he had scowled when she had made the mistake of referring to him as “Uncle Stannis”. 

“I am not your uncle,” he had ground out before stalking off. 

Not a fan of children, then. Sansa wonders if things have changed, now that he has an eleven-year-old of his own. She’s never met Shireen, but to have such a humourless father like not-Uncle Stannis… At the very least, both of them will have each other’s company now. 

 

***

 

Stannis is the same and yet different from what she remembers. His hair is thinner, a messy tuft of gray at the top and the rest of it cropped close to his head. Neat. Hardly adventurous.  

Sansa had forgotten how tall and broad-shouldered he is. He had towered over her when she was a little girl, of course. And she had hidden from him for the rest of the night. Fifteen years later, and she is long-legged and statuesque herself. And yet he still seems to loom over her when he stands up close. Which doesn’t happen very often. 

Stannis is a lawyer, from the little he volunteers. And instead of First, they sit in Business Class. He takes two seats to himself, needing the space to sprawl with papers and laptop and notepad and furious scribbles of the pen late into the night.  

Sansa and Shireen get acquainted meanwhile. She is a precocious child and shy at first, though whip-smart once she starts to warm.  _She is supposed to be this sad thing, they said. But she isn’t. It’s just her eyes — downturned. But she can't help the shape of them. And perhaps it’s like all other rumours that one hears of people who are serious and quiet and keep to themselves. The truth is often blander and kinder,_ thinks Sansa.  

Shireen’s burn scar is nowhere near as hideous as the rumours make it to be, and she pre-empts the question as a matter of course. 

“It was a mad man,” she says, as if reciting an old nursery rhyme. “He came towards me with a torch of fire and before anyone could believe it, he had attacked me. I was three. I almost died in that attack from shock, but I’m alright now.”    

Sansa stares at her and then works to soften her eyes and smile. “I’m so glad,” she says. “You have a very pretty smile and lovely eyes.” 

“Thank you,” Shireen replies politely. “But you are very, very pretty. And you don’t have to say all that to make me feel better. I am happy as I am.” And Sansa cannot find an adequate reply. 

The first time Stannis had laid eyes on Sansa, his own had narrowed.  

“You are beautiful,” he had stated as a matter of course, before he grimaced. He had shifted his weight to the other foot. “What I mean is… my daughter is already conscious about her appearance. And with you…” And he had made a vague gesture at her own face. “I don’t want my daughter to feel even more uncomfortable.” Right then, Stannis himself had modelled the very awkwardness he imagined his daughter to feel. He wouldn't look at her directly, not anymore. He had shifted his weight back on the other foot, and cleared his throat once, then another time.  

And then, as if willing himself to stop, he had ceased fidgeting rather suddenly. 

_He is nothing like_ Him _,_ Sansa observes idly now as she watches Stannis nod off to sleep, eyebrows furrowed still in disapproval. _And that is probably a good thing too._

 

***

 

Zermatt is white and cold, and every colour here seems rendered in high-definition. On a halcyon day such as this, Stannis looks especially tired and rumpled. And grey. Sansa wonders if he really, _properly_ slept at all and feels a little pity for him that she wisely keeps to herself. 

His suit is creased, his tie’s askew, and there is a smudge of ink-blue down the side of his right hand. The lines around his eyes look especially pronounced in this light and he squints irritably when he looks towards the street from the carousel as they wait for their bags. He insists on pulling all of theirs off the belt, and when Sansa quietly defies him by helping herself to her own, their hands brush and they both jump from the sharp snap of static. He looks at her now and his expression is a mix of thunder and something else she does not yet understand. _I cannot read him,_ she thinks. _I’m going to have to learn as I go._

Zermatt is _autofrei_. That is, combustion-engine cars are strictly prohibited within the town and so they slip into a waiting electric maxi taxi and head out towards the chalet. It turns out to be a fair drive and Sansa dozes off in between. She jerks awake one time to find her head leaning lightly on Stannis’s shoulder while he sits ramrod straight. His eyes are fixed on the road ahead.  

“Sorry,”she murmurs and he does not even acknowledge her when she moves to lean her head instead against the window. Shireen has fallen asleep on her father’s lap. 

 

***

 

_Chalet Sturm —_ Storm _—_ can be said to be a rather inauspicious name for a home nestled so close to the Matterhorn. Sansa blinks from the dissonance of standing now in this breathtaking expanse after spending the last eighteen hours in the almost claustrophobic company of Stannis. The front of the chalet had been impressive enough, though by no means quirky; a tall, almost boxy three-storey building made almost entirely of dark wood, the highest storey topped by the trademark steep sloping roof yet to be caked by a layer of thick snow that would no doubt fall by January. It all looks traditional. Innocuous enough from the street, as Swiss chalets go. A pair of elk horns grace the main entrance and Sansa had squashed the urge to make a joke then about yodelling a greeting.  

Once Sansa steps through the front door, however, she is completely transported.  

The house is an effortless, understated blend of dark woods, furs, seasoned leather, steel, and glass. Each room that Sansa walks past has full glass walls and like a shop display, each space boasts a king-sized bed with room to spare. Simple pieces of furniture — modern, antique, even verging on the whimsical — grace each room thoughtfully, large spaces cleverly carved into separate cozy enclaves from an eclectic mix of lights, tables, and chairs. Sansa loves the chandeliers made out of elk horns — a theme continued from the entrance and throughout the house. 

But it is when she steps into the back of the chalet that she gasps audibly. 

What had initially appeared to Sansa as a three-storey house is actually closer to four, with all of them having arrived from the street on the first storey. The actual ground floor drops below her now and the living room before her opens up suddenly to jaw-dropping views of the full mountain range and the great Matterhorn just beyond the wraparound balcony. The back wall of the house is nothing but glass two-storeys high, and spanning the full width of the chalet. Again, the room is art itself, with minimalist designer furniture on heated polished concrete floor that is warm underfoot when Sansa removes her boots and finally descends the stairs in a daze. 

“It seems so counter-intuitive!” blurts Sansa finally, gesturing to the windows. “I know there are thick curtains, but seeing so much glass… and then snow...” 

“Views apparently sell,” Stannis answers soberly. 

“Is this yours?” Sansa turns around finally, surprised, and a shadow falls over Stannis’s face then. 

“It is now. I inherited it when my brother Renly died without any wife or heirs.” _Or lovers that stuck around,_ ends Stannis darkly.  

“I’m sorry,” Sansa replies meekly, berating herself when she remembers. _But of course,_ she realises belatedly. He has lost most of his family too. Including his wife, Selyse. That was only two months ago.  

Sansa wonders suddenly if that is why he’s here with Shireen. To get away from it all. To have a change of scenery. To forget. 

_Well, that makes two of us._

 

***

 

In her haste to take in the astonishing living room, Sansa had walked past another feature that now tells her much about the man that had been Stannis’s younger brother: a sauna on the first storey, half of it glassed to take in the same breathtaking view of the ranges. The little room is minimalist pale pine slat — slat walls, slat beds, slat ceiling even. Dark tiles on the floor match the feature wall, blending the room back into the rest of the house. Sansa notes the fairy lights embedded into the slat ceiling and wonders then what the space would look like in the dead of night. Nothing on but the heat in this room, with these fairy lights on, the rest of the house plunged into darkness.  

She thinks of He Who Should Not Be Named, and how he would have pressed her into the glass right now, the pane cool on her breasts, his breath hot in her ear… 

_Forget him._ I will. 

There is a large heated jacuzzi in the corner of the balcony. Sansa cannot get over this house. How in all this minimalism and glass and see-through rooms and promise of heat and steam to counter the cold… how any hot-blooded human being can walk into this house and _not_ think about fucking. 

Stannis pulls his tie off tiredly before climbing up to his room on the top floor. He doesn’t say another word to anyone before shutting the door behind him. 

 

***

 

It is on night three that Sansa finally summons the courage to do it. She sneaks downstairs. 

The back of the house is bathed in pearly moonlight that bounces off the newly fallen snow, so bright that an almost midday lustre brushes across the landscape. The curtains had been left open and Sansa wishes now she has the photography skills to capture the light of the moon and how it plays with everything in this house. This gorgeous house.  

Sansa had turned on the sauna half an hour after she was sure everyone else had gone to bed. Stannis isn’t a snorer, which surprises her. Either that, or his room is unusually well sound-proofed. She had to wait until she thought he had turned off the light in his room. That had involved very quiet creeping up and down his stairs in the dark, until she saw the light under his door finally go out.  

That had been an hour ago. 

She slips into the sauna now and it is delightfully warm. Those fairy lights are gorgeous even in the day but with the rest of the house plunged into darkness now, the room takes on an almost preternatural quality.   

She pours water over the stones and hears the loud hiss. Steam coats the walls, her skin, the glass around her.  

Just as well. Even though it now obscures her view of the mountains, Sansa finally feels safe to begin what she had been waiting to do since she first realised this chalet has its own sauna. 

Carefully, she removes her robe until she stands completely naked now, save for the big white towel holding up her hair. She gingerly pulls herself up on a slat bed and lies down slowly, enjoying the fairy lights, the feel of her sweat trickling slowly between her breasts, the utter sense of calm and cleansing. 

_I will be rid of you._

 

* * *

 

 

THREE 

 

He looks at her and knows she is no longer the little girl he’d met so long ago. 

Shireen is growing lankier now, and he watches with an odd mix of pride and almost sadness as his daughter saunters across the room, the movement a studied grace. She had always been such a runt of a child. Turns out, perhaps, that she is only a late bloomer. He hopes for her sake that she takes after his height but not his broad build. The world is already unkind as it is to scarred women who don’t fit the usual definition of beauty.  

He will teach her how to be resilient. To stick to your purpose without turning to the left or the right. To let the taunts of those more charming yet facetiously cruel slide off your back. _You can prove them all wrong. You will. Your worth will be made by greater, better things than just a beautiful face._

Stannis would know. Growing up with Renly would make anyone something of an expert in all this. Cersei had bewitched his boor of a brother with her golden hair and silky voice before she turned out to actually _be_ a witch. And then Melissandre. 

She had been the last woman he'd slept with — and that was counting his wife. Straight after that, he had felt like he’d just bedded a whore. She had definitely been a lesson in the perils of mixing business with pleasure.  

Stannis watches as his child flops down on a sofa and wonders where he’s seen that before. And then he sees it suddenly: his daughter, mimicking the moves, the grace, the unconscious toss of her hair, the lilt in the voice… His daughter, an understudy of her _au pair_. 

Stannis’s gaze hardens. He drops his pen and looks intently now at the pair of young women before him. 

Sansa. Now _she_ is no longer the little girl he'd met at Robert’s party all those years ago. Beautiful manners, beautiful face. People had fallen over her immediately, the way he remembered them falling over Renly when he was that age. She was such a beautiful human specimen, even then. Almost doll-like, with perfect long eyelashes and a pinkness to her cheeks that looks almost airbrushed. Her lips, he remembered, were red as anything as if Catelyn had taken a rouge to her. Her hair was stunning then too. 

Stannis has lost the number of times he's wondered about touching her hair. About feeling the silk between his fingers, and pulling it to his face, and breathing her in. 

His eyes narrow and he wills something inside him to shrink right back once more.   _Nothing but a beautiful face._ Except he’s watched the kindness of the older girl towards his own and it is nothing like the skin-deep friendliness of Renly. Shireen forgets about her scar when she is with Sansa.  

He has watched them both over the weeks now. Sansa is fun with a sharp mind and a gentleness that suits Shireen down to a tee. His daughter drinks in her lessons greedily and the older girl is a natural teacher, obviously comfortable with, and used to mothering, younger siblings. When the heavier snowfalls finally came and Zermatt announced the official open of the skiing season, he had trusted Sansa enough to take Shireen to the snows. He had driven them there himself, after remembering to charge the electric car.  

That was the night he decided to join them for dinner.  

Usually, Cook leaves his meal to warm gently in the oven and he eats separately, an afterthought when his body finally protests and he looks up to find that it’s closing in on ten at night and Shireen has gone to bed. He’ll slip into her room then, kiss her goodnight, apologise again for getting carried away. And then he’ll bring his dinner to his study and it’s usually overcooked by then but it doesn’t matter, because it’s edible still. 

But it is poor form, and he knows it. Even though Sansa is under his employ, she is also something of a house guest — and a friend of the family, if one were to be pedantic about these things. And Shireen deserves at least an hour each day with her own father. 

And so he had joined them that evening, and Shireen had regaled him with an account of how she had taken her ski mask off because it was getting steamy under her goggles and she just wanted to ski unencumbered.  

And then it had happened — a merry band of little shitty men had jeered about her scar. 

And then Sansa had really laid it into them. They hadn't seen it coming, and their jaws had dropped when Sansa had bounded up from nowhere, hair and words flaming. From the way Shireen had told it, each man’s balls must have shrunk into themselves by the time Sansa was through. As for the heroine of the hour, she had started to redden as Shireen recounted — verbatim — her every insult. It would have torn flesh from a man’s back. Some of them had really been quite good.  

Stannis had kept his expression stern and slightly disapproving, although he had nodded to Sansa at the end. The language had taken him aback — he hadn’t expected such choice words to fall from those soft lips. Shireen had received a reminder that she was not to learn the bad but only the honourable from incidents such as these.  

Privately, he had wanted to pull his daughter’s champion in his arms and kiss his thanks. Long and hard.   

Sansa is good for Shireen, he reminds himself, even if the adoration his daughter bestows on the older girl is somewhat disconcerting. Even if his own thoughts towards their guest grows ever more disturbing.  

 

***

 

Small talk. He usually hates small talk, but it is inevitable around the dinner table. 

Sansa chips away at Stannis slowly, and he knows it and he feels it, and somehow it doesn’t grate on his nerves like it usually does. She asks about his work one day — the true nature of it — and he watches as admiration lights those bright, blue eyes. 

“A _human rights_ lawyer? Like… anything I would know about? Anything in the papers?”  

He pauses to think. To consider if he should tell her. It’s not illegal to do so, and it’s not like legal representation is confidential… but it can be sensitive.  

He mentions one. It has to do with missionaries currently detained with little hope of extradition in a war-torn third-world nation. His clients hadn’t been proselytising — they had been building a refuge for women running away from honour killings. But because it emerges that they have a strong faith that runs counter to the law of the land, they are now held and tortured for entering the country under false pretensions with the eventual intention of undermining the government through evangelism. 

Stannis is not a man of faith. He had lost what little of it he had the day he watched his parents die before him in a needless accident brought on by a drunk driver who had lost his way. But his duty is to his client anyway, and even if he does not share in their faith, he can share in their humanity. 

He watches as understanding floods her eyes, along with compassion. “No wonder you work so hard,” she replies and reaches unthinkingly for his hand before remembering at the last minute that she probably shouldn’t. Her hand stops mid-table before she pulls it back slowly, as if already chastened. 

He wishes she had touched him. Held his hand. He wishes he didn’t wish that.  

She never mentions his wife and he is almost glad she doesn’t, even while a small part of him wants her to. Shireen has told him how both girls had shared about their mutual pain of losing their own mothers. _Of course,_ he realised then. Sansa is perfect to talk to about this.  

Their families have each suffered pain and loss, although perhaps Sansa’s anguish — though probably greater than his in a way — is more straightforward. Unhindered by darker things. Her relationships with her siblings had been healthy at least. And her parents had loved each other, which is something Shireen had never experienced in her own home. 

And so it is like this — he shuts himself in his room and continues, looking out the glass to watch the girls as they play a game or watch a movie or do their lessons or talk. He emerges for dinner, rumpled and tired and blurry-eyed but hungry. For food, for company, for _her_. And then Shireen is in bed before too long. 

He has started taking his work out to the living room, after dinner. One evening, Sansa picks up something he’d written. It is confidential, technically, and normally he’d never allow it. But he allows her. 

“Um… a small mistake. Here…” And she scoots over. Her leg brushes his own and he tenses immediately. She’s hardly noticed, so earnest is she to point out his imperfections. 

“This comma. Is it meant to be there? Because it changes the meaning completely. See here…” And he _does_ see now. Amazingly. She’s read the page and understood… and actually finds the flaw.  

She is unbelievable. Her leg is still flush against his. She doesn’t move it away. 

She is his employee. And just under half his age.  

He is a widower. And he hasn’t needed or had a woman in… Stannis doesn’t want to count. 

She would have nothing to do with him. Not in that way. Surely. 

Sansa presses her knee into his. The slightest pressure that he feels all the way to his cock.  

_Surely?_

 

_***_

 

The night of the nightmare, Stannis wakes up with a jolt. Shireen is his first thought. It’s been two, three years since she’s had the last one but hearing the whimpers now, it brings him right back. 

Both the cook and the cleaner are long gone, of course. It’s only the three of them now but as he makes his way down the stairs and listens harder, he realises it’s not Shireen after all. 

His own daughter stands outside her door now. Her eyes are large with worry. “I don’t know what I should do, Dad.” That is her new thing, calling him ‘Dad’ now instead of the last eleven years of ‘Father’. How eighteen days changes things. 

“Just go to bed,” he tells her, assuring her with a small smile that is more grimace than anything. She nods dutifully, then takes one last worried look at Sansa’s bedroom, before she enters her own and shuts the door, drawing her curtains across the glass walls tighter. 

Stannis turns and tries the handle on Sansa's door. It is unlocked.  

“Sansa…” he starts softly, in a voice far gentler than he’d ever heard it. He feels the bed dip as he settles beside her. He hesitates before he starts to rub her back. Gently, like he used to do with Shireen. Sometimes it would calm her in her sleep and she would settle down and never even know. 

But Sansa’s eyes fly open.     

“Stannis?” And his hand stops instantly. He pulls it back, as if he had just been caught stealing jewels. 

But she sits up now, even as he starts to pull himself back up so he can leave her bed. 

“No…” She touches his arm. Her hand slides down to his wrist. “Please…” She is still groggy. But her eyes are staring straight into his. 

“Just…” And she’s struggling for words.  

He should go. He should not be here. He should go now.  

But her hand is still on his wrist and her normally lilting voice that always knows just what to say is now small and uncertain. 

“Could you just… could you…” And her eyes cast about the room helplessly now. “I just…” 

He pulls her to him gently and she sinks into his arms as if she’s found the answer. The room is heated comfortably. And she apparently likes to sleep in a thin camisole… and little else. 

But he doesn’t dwell on this as he holds her to him gently, relishing the feel of her skin on his. He struggles to remember a time he’s ever comforted a woman who isn’t his own daughter. He doesn’t think he ever has before. 

When he breathes in her hair, she suddenly stills as if she heard him. _As if she knows._

She pulls back slowly, her gaze on him a force he cannot, for the life of him, pull away from. 

“Sansa…” he begins, not knowing how to finish what he started. 

“Make me forget,” she whispers before she kisses him. 

There is a fraction of time that lasts for an eternity when the head wars with the body. _This isn’t right,_ some little voice pipes up but even the head is at war with itself. 

_Selyse is dead._ And suddenly a part of him long dormant stirs to life. 

He kisses her back and feels her mouth part against his. A small, strangled sound leaks from the back of his throat as he tastes her. And then something thin and fragile within him cracks and he’s devouring her. 

They both hear the click of a heavy wooden door as it closes. 

“Sansa?” Shireen’s tentative voice pries into the velvet dark of her room. She is far too obedient and well-mannered to walk right in. But she’s standing at Sansa’s door now, her eyes searching for both of them in the dark. 

“I’m okay, sweetling,” Sansa replies and he marvels at how clear, how normal she sounds. He is still trying to wrest his thoughts, his nerves, and bring them to heel.  

“Rest well.” His voice is rough again. He turns and leaves, shepherding his daughter back to her room.  

Sleep eludes him for at least two hours after that.  

 

***

 

It’s Christmas Eve and it’s only now that Stannis realises the girls have been hard at work. The living room is immense but between every second glass pane now sits a large velvet red bow. Fairy lights hang between and twinkle against the glass, creating twice the glimmer. A large Christmas tree takes pride of place in the middle of the room, the four tiny presents almost pitiful underneath its generous skirt.  

Stannis is privately chagrined, which manifests openly in tetchy, brusque behaviour for the rest of the afternoon. He feels blindsided, ill-prepared, guilty and self-conscious. Until today, it never crossed his mind that he should have made a fuss, that Shireen might have even wanted to celebrate. Or forget. Or use the time to remember. It never crossed his mind that Sansa had chosen to spend her Christmas with them, when she had taken up the job. That it might have been a kindness to do something small but thoughtful for her. 

And so he braves the crowds in the village and buys the only things worth buying at such a late hour: an eerily life-like doll for his only child, and a _Princesse Grace de Monaco_ Montblanc fountain pen for Sansa. Both surprisingly cost about the same, and both the girls are gracious and grateful. They all open their presents after dinner, deciding collectively that Christmas Day is best spent sleeping in.  

Shireen made him a diorama of the ski slopes “so that he can have a bit of the outside in his office with him while he works.” 

Sansa gives him a Swiss cuckoo clock with a chime that seems specially designed to worsen his mood and migraine. He doesn’t have to ask to know that this is her way of telling him to get out of his office more. 

It is the most whimsical gift anyone has ever thought to bestow on Stannis in his adult life. He is the last man that anyone would associate with whimsy and caprice… and yet here he sits, staring at this ridiculous kitsch of a timepiece on his coffee table, fingers resting loosely over his mouth to stifle a smile. 

It is a strangely flattering present.  

They do not sing carols. They do not indulge in mawkish sentimentality. The dead are remembered but they are not mentioned, nor do they mention those living that they fervently wish to forget. Baratheons and Stark politely exchange accounts of how their families used to mark the occasion, before moving on to other topics. In the end, Shireen turns in for the night only an hour after her usual bedtime. And to his surprise, Sansa follows suit soon after. 

He should do the same, but his mind is not used to resting so soon and so he sits up in bed and reads long into the night. Even in the distance, that infernal cuckoo clock can be heard faintly marking the passage of the hours.  

His body is tired, but his mind is still racing and in the end, he gives up and gets out of bed. 

When Renly had renovated Storm’s End and turned it into this modern madness, this almost vulgar extravagance of wood, steel and glass overlooking the majesty of the mountains, Stannis had initially hit the roof. Even now, ten years later, this chalet is somewhat unorthodox. Stannis had thought the glass bedrooms highly impractical and obscene — even with the wraparound curtains. He had berated Renly on the energy efficiency of the home. Of losing the original character of their family property. Of not consulting anyone else, but just going ahead like the entitled shit he usually is. 

Funny how time, death, and a change in context take away the sting of things.  

Stannis appreciates some things about this house now — especially since watching Sansa take in the eccentricities for the first time. Renly had never been backward about buying the best, and for all his resistance to any book-learning, he had a natural eye for beauty and liked to surround himself with it. 

The sauna had been an especially nice touch. 

Stannis is just tying a quick knot on his robe when he realises that the sauna is on. _Surely we would’ve noticed if it’d been left on earlier,_ he wonders. 

The air outside has already cooled and Stannis has to peer right in to see past the beading condensation on the glass. 

And then he sees her. All of her. 

Sansa, lying on the slats, arms on her side and eyes closed. Beads of perspiration trickle down her neck, her long pale arms, her sweet breasts. The V of her is tantalisingly out of view as she bends her knee, tilting it to rest on the textured tile wall so he now gets an eyeful of a porcelain-smooth buttock. 

He shouldn’t be here. For the life of him, he should turn and leave. But Stannis is rooted to the spot, transfixed by the most sensual display of human flesh he’s ever come across. 

She turns suddenly and screams. 

He turns now and bolts, blood pouring into his face. A collision of thought and feeling. Confusion. Lingering, yearning, _scalding_ desire. And anger at himself most of all.  

“Wait!” she now calls out. And then she calls again. “Mr Baratheon, please wait!”  

He turns around slowly. Reluctantly. 

She is covered now — just. A towel had been thrown over to hide her breasts and the terrycloth stops just below her dewy sex. She’s holding the ends behind her, and he can still make out the curve of the bottom he now longs to cup with his own hand. 

“I hadn’t realised you were using it,” he explains stiffly. “I thought it had been left on for hours by mistake. I understand now.” 

“Come in.” 

“It’s alright, Sansa. You were here first.” 

“Come in, Mr Baratheon. There is plenty of room.” And one end of the towel slips from her hand. 


	2. Chapter 2

  
[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/41377507041/in/dateposted-public/)  


 

FOUR 

 

He averts his gaze once more even as he reacts to her bodily under his thick bathrobe. _I shouldn't be here._ He stares down the corridor leading back out to the front doors as she adjusts herself until her towel is secure and he remembers to breathe.  

She's staring at him now, the door still open between them so the steam has long escaped and the glass is starting to clear. Then she turns back into the room and climbs up the slat beds once more. 

And god help him, but he steps into the room after her and closes the door behind him. 

He climbs up and sits on the topmost shelf, the same row as she except he’s leaning against the pine slat wall while she sits at right angles to him. Her nails are painted vermillion and she wiggles her toes now, as if conscious of his thoughts.  

It would be so easy to reach out and touch her, to trace a finger along the row of perfect toes. And then to pull a foot into his lap and work it, rub his thumb along her arch and discover if she’s sensitive to his touch.  

Instead he places his hands on his lap. And when he’s tempted again, he laces his fingers, twisting his hands against each other.    

They sit like this for ages and after a length, he returns her unblinking gaze. The room is getting warm again and the air oppressive so his breath turns shallower and shallower.  

Sansa sweeps her legs over the side now and slips down to the floor. He watches as she walks over to the bucket of water and scoops a full ladle. 

“I don’t want the steam,” he suddenly speaks up. “It’s stuffy in this room as it is.” 

She returns the ladle to the bucket, climbs back up the steps and after a moment’s hesitation, straddles his lap. 

His hands come up automatically and they settle around her waist, and he knows he has lost it when his mouth meets hers once again and he devours her like the forbidden fruit she is. There is no hesitation from her, and he marvels that she is so certain, so fearless, so unencumbered. She just moves. Her tongue darts in and when they touch this way, he hears that high, almost strangled sound from the back of his throat again. _Desire._ His grip slips to her hips and tighten around them, and his thoughts grow frantic. The mind and the body disconnect and drift even further apart. 

He feels himself harden underneath his robe which is parted now, a path of flesh continuous, exposed to her until it is cut off rudely by his briefs. The thin fabric is stretched tight over his painfully prominent bulge.  _She is naked under her short, little towel._ That is what he remembers, and just knowing that her legs are spread wide around him, that her sex is mere layers away from his length while her tongue tells him slowly how she’d like it down low…  

He groans and feels himself throb against her now. Layers. Thick layers. Mere layers. 

He clutches at facts. She is young. She is still a student. A slip of a girl-woman. Maybe even a troubled one.  

_You just buried Selyse. Have some fucking respect. You owe the woman that at least._

It buys him a moment’s clarity. Stannis actually stops. He breaks the kiss and his breath is hard now. He doesn’t quite know if it’s from the dry heat of the sauna or the fact that each searing kiss seems to suck the very air out of his lungs and empty his brain. 

Her arms are around his neck still and she stares at him again now, even as her hips start to move against him. 

She grinds into him. Once. Twice. The blue in her eyes turn dark and her lids slide half shut. His hand bunches the towel around her hips and when she moves her sex against the length of him… as she slides herself over the folds, feeling the terrycloth in the way and all of him thick and corded and hard underneath… she rubs again and moans a little moan, and it takes every ounce of strength, of _something_ to keep from pulling her towel apart. 

Her breath is ragged, matching his. Every sensation is heightened. It is the room. It’s like they’re running out of air.  

But she has built a rhythm now, one that he’s starting to match. With each grind, he feels himself keening towards her in return and soon they find a cadence that is rough as it is clumsy and desperate. Sweat beads on his chest as it does hers, and his head is starting to throb. 

What little of his robe that lies between them starts to slip away and when he feels her sweet little sex through the thin cotton of his briefs, his breath hitches. She speeds up, a soft whine building as she buries her head in the crook of the neck and he gives up all restraint and pretence now. He starts thrusting his own hips up, seeking the same friction. 

He’s never seen anything so beautiful as when Sansa finally comes.

 

***

 

They both sleep in, or at least they pretend to. Sansa hears the house start to stir but chooses not to come downstairs. She guesses that Shireen had helped herself in the kitchen before slipping back up to her room. From the dull sounds of movement above her, Stannis is awake as well. But he hasn't emerged from his room.

Sansa doesn’t want to get out and face him either.  

She had fled. He had held her after, as she’d drifted back down to earth, her face still buried in his neck, tasting his sweat, keeping the clamour of thoughts at bay. And then without another word or explanation, she had slipped out of his embrace before fleeing the room. The cold air had hit her and she'd snapped awake then. And she had fled. And he had let her. 

Eventually, they must both have felt guilty about leaving Shireen all on her own on Christmas day and they slip into the living room, one after the other. Sansa feels his gaze burn on her neck, and she glances at him when she’s sure no one’s looking. He’s out of his suit today, for once. Usually, he’s in a shirt and tie, all business-smart and serious. She guesses it’s because he’s in video conferences constantly. But today he’s layered two V-necked T-shirts that look snug but comfortable and seasoned. It’s the first time she sees his arms and she can’t help but stare at the ropes of sinews wrapping around them. The definition. She wonders if it’s the same everywhere else. 

Neither of them smiles very much today until Shireen starts to wonder. “Have you and Dad had a fight?” she asks timidly when Stannis is out of earshot. They are making hot chocolate in the huge modern kitchen that Sansa absolutely loves and wants to take back home.  

“No, sweetling,” Sansa answers truthfully. And she smiles her brightest smile at the worried younger girl.  

They make an effort to speak to each other after that. A small storm blows in and Sansa checks the pantry for supplies, fully expecting to be cooking for the next few days. They eat the simple roast dinner she throws together, Shireen and Sansa supplying most of the chatter around the table. When Stannis's hand brushes her own as she hands him the bread basket, she almost drops the damn thing. 

The snap of static again. His hand seems warm. 

The cuckoo clock goes off and names the hour. Shireen retires at ten. Sansa soon after. 

Stannis hears the clock go off at midnight and counts them down, every cuckoo. The house is plunged in darkness but he leaves his curtains open, right where he has full line of sight to the stairs. He wonders if she’ll come to him even though he knows she won’t.   

The way she had taken over… the feel of her body against his own. The way she took her pleasure, knowing he would give it to her. The claim over his body, that arousing confidence that Selyse could never muster. The natural sweetness that Melissandre never had. 

He pulls the elastic band of his pants down and over and wraps his hand the way he wishes she would now. The rhythm he builds is gentler than usual and when he closes his eyes, her hand is his, her mouth is hot and sweet.  

He sinks deep into his bed like he’s going under. He mouths her name when he comes. 

 

***

 

The Freys arrive like clockwork after Christmas, and Sansa learns exactly how humongous the family is when she drops Shireen off that afternoon. The Freys are apparently well known to be fecund, and there’s always a baby just born, about to be born, or on the way to getting made.

It’s been a few years since Shireen has seen her best friend Merianne, and the two are loathe to part, already protesting the time for Sansa to pick her up before dinner. “It’s only four hours! Please can I stay?” It is the first time that Shireen comes close to bargaining for anything. 

Stannis gives his permission for her to stay until just after dinner. He will come and fetch her home.  

The moment Sansa enters through the front door, every promise he made the night before snaps like cheap glass. 

Her strides are long as are his when they close the distance, and her hands are in his hair, on his face. She holds him as he holds her and they kiss with a hard urgency that runs contrary to the long, lazy afternoon of freedom they’ve just acquired.  

He doesn’t know how she does it. How she breaks through every wall he’s ever erected between the black and the white. How she cuts through his reserve, his misgivings, his absolutism like a heated knife through butter.  

Her mouth is hot and sweet, just like his dreams last night had promised.  

She breaks away suddenly and smiles almost shyly when she takes his hand. He lets her lead him now, only too glad to follow. They walk up a flight of stairs and past the floor leading to her room.  

They climb the only flight of stairs that lead straight to his. 

The room is redolent with the smell of _him_ , but it’s not unpleasant at all. Sansa breathes the bedroom in deeply and feels her own sex grow heavier still. He smells different but amazing nonetheless.  

She turns to him now, and they take turns to strip each impediment off; his jumper, her ribbed turtleneck, his T-shirts — both together in one swoop, and he helps her with that. Her bra is white and see-through lace and innocence newly lost. When he takes a nipple in her mouth, she gasps in surprise, a sweet high note which only makes him want to hear it again. 

They tumble slowly into the bed behind her. The sheets are still rumpled, the groove where his body had lain still carved out of surrounding pillows. She fits into it now and he fits over her, pulling the quilt over them both. A fortress, a hiding place, a cocoon.   

They return to kisses, even while hands get busy lower. The tangle of unseen limbs as pants are peeled and shucked, first his, then hers. It’s like they’re flying blind in the dark, even though it’s barely lunchtime and the room is airy and light. The white curtains are drawn tight and the only view from here is that of Stannis’s unsmiling face over hers. 

Sansa kisses the corner of his mouth. The tip of his nose. He closes his eyes. And so she stretches her neck and kisses them too, one and then the other. 

He doesn’t know what to make of this, the sweetness. Of kissing to comfort and play. Of brushing her lips across his forehead to ease a hurt that she can only sense but not fully understand because he never told her. It’s almost humiliating, in a way. The admission that he, a man more than twice her age, is yet unused to the simple gestures of intimacy. 

He had slept with his wife but he had never made love to her.  

He runs his hand over her sex even as he feels her grip his length and start to stroke him slowly. When he sinks his fingers in her, she moans softly into his ear and he has to grit his teeth to stop from coming right then. 

It’s been a long, long time since he’s had a woman. And he’s never had a woman like Sansa. 

Silence as he works her sex, each change in her breath, each airy sigh a signal, a teacher. He chances upon a new angle suddenly and the cry she rewards him with renews his every vigour. He starts to flick up now, just to hear that cry again. And again. And again. And then he’s working his fingers feverishly, even when he starts to tire, even when he’s close to cramping. She’s gasping now, her eyes rolled back, her head dropping softly to the side. “Yes…” she whimpers and the word moves him more than any threat from man or beast ever could. 

But she’s pulling his hand away from her now, and her eyes are dark the way they had been that night in the sauna. Her voice is low and husky when she tells him to please enter her.  

He dips his head down to kiss a breast, to take another nipple in his mouth until she squirms. And then he’s poised at her entrance, the lips of her now sopping sex wrapped just around his tip.  

And then he enters her, sinking slowly, feeling her every inch fit tight around him until he hits the hilt.  

She feels herself tensing, the size of him jarring her senses more than she ever anticipated. Stannis is big — bigger than what she’s had before. Bigger than she knows how. She holds her breath as she feels him stretch her slowly and her mouth drops open in a soundless cry. Before he thinks to move within her, she splays her hand over his buttock to still him. 

“Not yet,” she breathes. “Just… give me a moment.”  

He does, unquestioning. She wills herself to relax. And then slowly, her hand still on the curve of his buttock, she guides him. 

Little moves at first, just so she can get used to him. And then they start to build a small rhythm, sliding against each other. Her desire from before is starting to build once again, and from the way he’s got the pillow behind her in a death grip, Sansa’s guessing that Stannis’s own control is hanging by a thread.  

And it is. Stannis holds his breath, feeling every inch of her body wrapped around him inside. It takes all of his focus to will himself not to come now. She is so very snug around him. The covers on his back are suddenly too much and he reaches back to yank them off him. The cool ambient air chills the corded muscles on his back, drying the thin sheen of perspiration coating his skin. 

He pulls out a little and plunges back in, and both of them moan. He squeezes his eyes shut and pulls further out before slamming back into her. _So good. Too good. Too good to be true._

_“Yes!”_ he hears the whimper again and it’s all the permission he needs. He leans over her now, resting his weight on his forearms flanking her sweet face. He drinks her eyes in and sees that he has her full attention before he starts the dance. 

“Ho…” she’s moaning now, her breaths ragged as he builds speed. He pounds into her like a piston, short, quick thrusts that walk that fine line between speed and maximum friction. He catches her mouth with his own and only pulls away so he can hear her come for him in a mess of twists and mewls. 

A strong thrust, and then another as he hears her cry out into the room. The freedom that privacy affords, the knowledge of not having to explain to anyone else heightens every sensation and the groan that spills from his throat is loud, hoarse, and almost feral.  

He pulls out and within a second or two, he comes fully, the cool air hitting his cock as he spends his seed thickly into his waiting hands to spare her perfect body the mess of his affections. 

 

* * *

  
FIVE

 

And so it is like this: a new week, a new rhythm, a new understanding. Shireen has her lessons first thing in the morning now; she is like her father in that regard, focused on finishing the hard things first before she would allow herself pleasure. Sansa remains a dedicated teacher. The cleaner comes in the morning and Cook is away. The girls take over the meals as a result, a natural extension of Shireen’s education as Sansa works in lessons on nutrition, math and science. The younger girl seems more distant now, distracted — a natural consequence of having children her own age to play with. Sansa understands, of course. But she cannot help but feel a touch wistful. 

Stannis wanders down when the infernal cuckoo chimes twelve. He’s up earlier than ever now, the faint sounds of his staunch professional ethic stirring as early as five in the morning when the house is still dark but the groove beside his own in bed has just gone cold. 

And then Shireen leaves for Merianne's and the house of glass is a vault of secrets as Sansa buries her face in Stannis’s chest and whispers her wishes. 

They don’t always retire to his room. One time he returns from Merianne’s to find her sitting on the kitchen benchtop waiting, long bare legs crossed at the knees so her dress runs up mid-thigh, a wine glass in hand filled with juice. She tastes of oranges when he plunders her mouth shortly after, her legs uncrossed so he nestles between them, his hardness pressed softly against her centre. Her dress is delicate white wool that keeps her warm even when she loses the lace underneath. Even when his fingers seek her heat and take their instruction. 

She knows exactly what she wants, when she wants it, and how.  

One time she has him press her against the wall of window with nothing but the valley stretched out below them. She shivers when her breasts, her stomach meet the glass even though her skin is already on fire. “Kiss my neck…” she implores and somehow he’s learnt when to take things a little further. When he bites down on her skin, he feels her tremble against him and her eyes are closed as if remembering. 

He wants her to forget, and so he spends the time he can ill afford to roam her body, branding himself on her skin. Her hands leave prints when he claims her from behind, the patch of glass before her face misting hard when she comes close to that exquisite point of her pleasure. No one can see them from up here he knows, and yet his face is bright red from nerves and exertion. His heart is pounding from the daring and the deed and he buries his face in her back when he slams his length into her, his arms wrapped across her breasts, her waist, gathering as much of her as he can. Bringing her closer to him than ever so perhaps she can melt into his skin. 

He has lost it. He has lost his mind, his discipline, his judgement. If Melissandre had been his red siren once then Stannis needs to know now. _This. What hell kind of sorcery is this?_

 

***

  
“How did your wife die?”

They are lying now on the giant rug in the middle of the living room, the valley twinkling beyond the balcony like fairy lights. Neither of them has bothered to turn on the lamps. Shireen had called to ask to stay over at Merianne’s. An increasingly frequent request, one that Sansa tries hard not to wish for each night. 

They are lying there, wrapped in quilts and blankets that they’d dragged here from the nearest spare bedroom. His heartbeat is slow and steady against her ear and their legs are tangled loosely. 

She feels him shift at her question. 

“Cancer,” he returns eventually, and she cranes her neck up to look him in the face. But his eyes are staring unseeing at the valley beyond. 

“Did she suffer very much?” she asks quietly. Her mother hadn’t. Sansa never got to say goodbye. It’s a different kind of pain — sharp and biting, with many regrets about mundane last words and wasted opportunities to mend fences and say good-bye. But Sansa imagines that watching a loved one die slowly would be an agony of its own. 

“She suffered.” His voice is clipped again, slightly hard. But she’s been with him almost a month now, and she is starting to understand that this is his way. He’s putting the fences up. Compartmentalisation. He relents. “But she didn’t suffer very long. In the end, at least her prayer was answered.”  

“You were with her? In the end?”  

“Yes.” 

“And you nursed her? 

“Yes." 

Sansa’s hand reaches up and she brushes his chest, wanting to soothe the heart underneath. But he catches her hand abruptly.   

“You misunderstand this, Sansa.” His voice is suddenly hard. “I was not a good husband.” 

“You nursed your wife.” 

‘I didn’t love her.” He paused. “I was glad when her misery ended.” The confession at last — truthful, ugly. It is what it is. But Sansa neither looks shocked nor disappointed. 

“All the more,” she replies instead. “You watched over a woman until her death because you’re not governed by emotion, but by a kind of old-fashioned nobility. If what you say is true, that you didn’t love her—” 

“We didn’t love each other.” 

Sansa nods. “You were there for her anyway. At the end of the day, she didn’t die alone. You’re a good man."   

Stannis barks a short laugh that holds no humour. But he pulls her closer to him anyway and breathes her in deeply through the crown of her head. _His opiate._ He doesn’t agree with her assessment, even though he knows this is not the babbling of a lovestruck teenager. Sansa can be something of an old soul. But she doesn’t know him as well as he knows himself.  

“I married Selyse, knowing I’ll never care for the woman. There is no nobility in that.” His voice is flat and final, but he hesitates with the rest. For in the end, he hadn’t even been true to their marriage vows. _And Selyse knew._  The morning after, when he trudged back to the house, he could read it in her eyes.  

Barely a year later, and Selyse was dead. 

Melissandre will forever remain one of his prominent regrets. He looks at Sansa now and wonders if she will be one too. Barely a quarter year, and he has given this unearthly creature his body willingly and repeatedly. And in a way that he never did to his own wife. Cheating her, even now from beyond the grave. 

_Many men do it._ Stannis is not like many men. There is right and there is wrong. He’s man enough, at least, to own to that. It’s a hollow consolation. 

 

  
***

  
“Tell me about him,” Stannis finally asks and tries not to hold his breath.

It is a question that has nibbled on the corners of his mind far more than he feels it should. And from the way Sansa stiffens immediately, Stannis knows she understands perfectly to whom he is referring. 

He doesn’t have to look in her eyes to know she is searching now for the words.  

“He is trouble,” she finally says. “I needed to walk away.” 

“Even from your studies?” And the words sound paternal and stodgy, even to him. He doesn’t even know which discipline she’s chosen. He’s been guessing. He knows it’s not Law, but she’s bright and observant. _A quick learner, even when she insists she isn’t._

“I needed to get away.” She is speaking to the ceiling now, and Stannis wonders if she is telling him a truth, or reassuring herself with a lie.  

He wants to know who he is. He wants to know if he's anything like Stannis had been in his younger days. _Did he make you who you are? Or have you always been this way?_

_You were six when we first met. Preternatural even then._

“Would you still have continued your higher education if not for… this boy?” 

“In a heartbeat.” And because her bald preference is now an implied slight on his company, she adds hastily, “I love being in Zermatt. I adore Shireen. And this time with you is very special.” 

She’s done talking now. She’s all about the showing now.  

She’s kissing down the length of his body and he feels her nose as she nudges against him _there_. The thoughts that fly through his mind are enough to make him shudder.  

Selyse had never taken him in her mouth, believing the act a sin that only whores engaged in for a fee. And maybe she had been right; Melissandre had taken him in her mouth and sucked him dry and he had stood in the shower long after the fact until his back had turned red from the punishing heat.  

Sansa is no whore. But he doesn’t know what to make of this. 

There is a pause when she uncovers him and he feels her trace the length of him as if she were inspecting a flower. He twitches to her touch, which only heightens her curiosity. She runs her fingers down the inside of his thigh and he closes his eyes now and sinks his head into the goose down pillow The cool of the sheets is a sharp contrast to the heat that seems to rise from his every pore. 

When she slowly, softly kisses his tip, his hand hits the bed on reflex so she looks up, surprised.  

“More?” she asks, and he shakes his head before he nods. He holds his breath when the rest of her mouth sinks over him. He hisses out the breath he holds, relishing the sensation of her, of him in her. 

It was never like this. He grips the sheets and grits his teeth. _Never like this._

It takes all of his self-control not to buck up into her mouth. He doesn’t know the etiquette for these things, so he lies perfectly still, even as his breath turns ragged and his legs stiffen and tense. But he is losing. With every swirl of her tongue, with every stroke and open-mouth kiss, Stannis feels his control slip through his fingers. He wills himself to stroke her hair softly even when baser needs demand that he fucks her mouth like a whore's.  

But he could never. _This woman._ He starts to pant, and pant harder still when he hears the unmistakable crinkle as a tiny packet is torn. She fits the wrapper down his length using her mouth, a move so slick he has to wonder what this boy, exactly, had taught her.  

Stannis doesn't know how to feel about that.  

When she straddles his body suddenly… when she leans to cover his mouth with hers and he smells himself on her before she sinks slowly down the length of him… When she works him to a froth, the slickness of her sex punctuating the silence until she moans... When she starts to keen and whimpers softly about just how good he is to her… 

_You make me forget._

Then, and only then, does he let go — even as he clings to her body, holding her against him like a man on the precipice of falling from an unprecedented height.   

 

***

 

She wakes up suddenly, the mysterious sound in her dream now made obvious once her eyes adjust to the dark and she bends to listen. 

Stannis grinds his teeth, his body curled again into a ball. 

He grinds his teeth more often than not now. Sansa wonders if it has anything to do with the fact that their time in Zermatt is drawing to a close. He’s certainly been on edge every time they skirt anywhere near the topic. _Just a few days._   

She will be returning to their real home, she reasons. Somewhere back in Chicago before he flies to Germany. But from there, Stannis will be traveling the world often and for longer and longer periods away. _How long can this last anyway,_ she wonders. She shouldn’t be here. He had been right. She needn’t have walked away from her education. She could have made it work. Graduated with double majors as planned.  

But a promise is a promise. And Shireen would be devastated if she left. There is another to consider. 

She places her hand on the side of his face and starts to stroke him gently. “S’okay…” she soothes, over and over. “S’okay…” She doesn’t know if he hears her. Maybe he does. She leans in and nuzzles his neck, breathing his scent, nudging him softly behind the ear until his jaw stops working. 

She spoons him from behind and stays awake until she feels him start to relax. _There isn’t much time left,_ she senses rather than knows. Their time together was always meant to be a finite thing. A business arrangement. A precious thread that had a beginning but must come to a natural end.  

She curls into his back and misses him already.  

 

***

 

He is conscious first and it takes her a while to swim back up before she breaks through the surface and is fully awake herself. The room is far brighter than Sansa expects and she squints a little now.  

Stannis is sitting bolt upright in bed, his face pinched and stricken. 

The curtains are still parted from the night before. Shireen stands there looking in, her heart broken.  


* * *

 

SIX

 

She had known. She had known for a time. She had had her suspicions. _That_ was why she had stayed away at Merianne's. 

She had known. But she had not expected to return home early only to have it rubbed in her face like this.  

It all comes out now and the realisation makes Sansa sick with guilt. 

"How could you!" she says, the tears falling freely down her face. Stannis takes a step towards his daughter, but she steps back instantly. Eyes wet. Face horrified. Repulsed.  

"Shireen..." 

"Mummy's just died! How _could_ you!" And the hurt-laced words lance both the father and the sister friend teacher. 

"And you!" Her gaze is now on Sansa's and these are the eyes of a little girl who has aged in a matter of minutes. "I thought you were my friend!" 

"Sweetling—" 

"—STOP!" she shrieks. It slices the air like a blade. "I _hate_ you!" 

She runs from the door and they follow her anxiously. She spies something in the room across and dashes into his office, his study. 

Shireen grabs the cuckoo clock from his table and pushes past them towards the balustrade. There is a sickening discordance of sound when it smashes on the polished concrete two floors below.  

 

***

 

It is horrid. The glasshouse is now a fishbowl. They are watched constantly. There is no touching. No glances. No words on their own. Stannis stays in his office. Shireen stays in her room with the door open. Merianne keeps asking for her friend.  

Shireen watches them all the time. 

Once, Sansa gets up in the middle of the night to fill a glass of water. She returns to find the girl standing at the bottom of her father’s staircase. Shireen looks almost surprised to find Sansa coming from the opposite direction of where she’d assumed she had gone. But the girl says nothing, only staring through her _au pair_ as she makes her way back to her bed. 

The glasshouse is a fishbowl. The writing is on the wall, clear as anything.   

 

***

 

He finds her packing. Not just her clothes, but all of it. The photos of her family. Her books. Her shoes. And he knows. She’s right, of course. This is unworkable. 

Shireen appears around the corner when he enters her room. “What are you doing, Father?” she asks. Her eyes are wide but the question has lost its innocence. Stannis sighs heavily. 

“I need to talk to Sansa.” 

She makes as if to enter the room, and his voice is harsher than he wants it to be when he barks at his daughter, “No, Shireen. I need to talk to Sansa alone.” 

His daughter’s mouth sets in an obstinate line and he tamps down the urge to rebuke her sharply. _Who is the parent here! Who do you think you are!_ But he still feels as if he has lost the right.  

She stares at them both. Sansa is still folding her clothes and tucking them into her suitcase.  

Both of them wait until the door closes behind the younger girl. Sansa stops folding and putting away. They stare at each other. There is so much to say, and hardly any space to say it. Or time. Or words. 

“You’re leaving us.” 

“I am no longer useful to your family.” Her voice catches and Sansa is surprised. She hadn’t meant to cry but the tears that run down the face say otherwise. 

It is enough. Two steps, and he’s wrapped his arms around her and he’s kissing her hard even as she sobs in his mouth. _I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I was so selfish._

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. “I wish…” And he is at a loss for words. What _does_  he wish for? That the timing of things had been different? That they had met in another lifetime? Would they even have looked at each other then?  

He brushes her hair from her face. This face. _I probably would have._

“When do you plan to leave?” 

“If it’s alright with you, tomorrow.” 

 

***

 

They are silent in the electric taxi that is eerily silent itself. Shireen had willingly given them the space at last, just when she’s leaving. There had been no real farewell. Just a nod and a courteous thank you that doesn’t reach the eyes.  

He is letting her go so easily. Not a protest. No outward show of desperation to make it work, come what may. And she doesn’t know whether to feel relief or disappointment.  

He takes her to Zermatt's heliport, and from there it is just an hour by chopper to Zürich’s airport.  

Their fingers lace loosely in the car. She remembers lacing them once when she was riding him, his body in complete supplication. 

_He made her forget. Most of the time._

"I will remember you,” she says instead. 

When they kiss, it doesn’t quite feel like a goodbye this time but she’s learnt not to read too much into these things.  

 

* * *

SEVEN

 

Two days later, her phone rings and her eyes adjust to the dark. That number. It’s not on her contact list and yet she’d committed it to memory anyway. 

She inhales sharply.  

She’s wide awake now. Sansa’s heart beats wildly, her thumb poised to swipe either way. And in spite of it all, her lips curl into a small smile.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this short story. It's my very first go writing this pairing, and I have really enjoyed exploring the dynamic between the two. 
> 
> In fact, I've enjoyed it so much that I have now placed this fic as a part of a series I'm starting that will include more Stannis x Sansa. Just a collection of one-shots that can each be read as a standalone, although there will be a bigger story woven through all of them. 
> 
> The glass house is an amalgam of several houses I found browsing Swiss chalets online for inspiration. But the pics you see above are from the house created as [Swiss architect, artist and designer Heinz Julen's private home, The Loft](http://heinzjulen.com/). 
> 
> I'd love to hear from you. And for all the support I've already received from the first chapter — thank you. It has definitely given me the juice to keep persisting with this fic. xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> A very special thank you as always to Apocketfulofwry for reading through this, gently pointing out my oversights, being my ever-ready sounding board, and telling me if the sex is hot or not... even when she doesn't usually StanSa. ;-) xoxo


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